The Triple Package

by Amy Chua

  Two Asian groups we decided not to include were Korean and Filipino Americans, although in certain respects both groups are quite successful. Koreans are an extremely interesting but bimodal case, displaying both extraordinary achievement and relatively high poverty levels. See Renee Reichl Luthra and Roger Waldinger, “Intergenerational Mobility,” in David Card and Steven Raphael, eds., Immigration, Poverty, and Socioeconomic Inequality (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2013), pp. 169, 182 (Korean Americans have high percentages of both educational attainment and households in poverty). Overall, by standard income metrics, Korean Americans are not nearly as disproportionately successful as the groups we study; for example, their median household income is barely distinguishable from that of the U.S. population as a whole (both being around $51,000). See U.S. Census, American Community Survey, Table S0201: Selected Population Profile in the United States (2010 3-year dataset) (population group codes 001 – total population; 023 – Korean). Unlike the Koreans, Filipino Americans are more homogeneous and have a very high median household income. But on individual income measures, Filipino Americans rank surprisingly low; for example, working Filipino men earn a median income of about $45,000—actually below the national average. See ibid. (population group code 019 – Filipino). By contrast, Jewish, Indian, Chinese, Iranian, and Lebanese Americans are all in the top tier in terms of both household and individual income.

  CHAPTER 3: THE SUPERIORITY COMPLEX

  “one’s own group (the in-group) as virtuous and superior”: Ross A. Hammond and Robert Axelrod, “The Evolution of Ethnocentrism,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 50, no. 6 (2006), p. 926. Sumner wrote that “[e]ach group nourishes its own pride and vanity, boasts itself superior, exalts its own divinities, and looks with contempt on outsiders.” William Graham Sumner, Folkways: A Study of the Sociolological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals (Boston: The Athenaeum Press, 1907), p. 13; see also Paul C. Rosenblatt, “Origins and Effects of Group Ethnocentrism and Nationalism,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 8, no. 2 (1964), p. 131.

  For Adler . . . a “superiority complex” was in every case: Alfred Adler, The Science of Living (Garden City, NY: Garden City Publishing, 1929), p. 79 (“if we inquire into a superiority complex . . . we can always find a more or less hidden inferiority complex”), p. 97 (“the superiority complex is one of the ways which a person with an inferiority complex may use as a method of escape from his difficulties”).

  coining the term: Adler apparently first used the terms “inferiority complex” and “superiority complex” in 1925 or 1926. See Heinz L. Ansbacher and Rowena R. Ansbacher, eds., The Individual Psychology of Alfred Adler (New York: Harper & Row, 1964), pp. 256. But both terms were already in use in 1922. See, e.g., “Calls Our Women Superior: French Philosopher Declares Americans ‘Will Go Far,’” New York Times, Jan. 30, 1922 (“In Europe Freud declared women are handicapped by an inferiority complex . . . but it is certainly not true here. They have what I would describe as the superiority complex”).

  New England . . . Cromwell: Todd Gitlin and Liel Leibovitz, The Chosen Peoples: America, Israel, and the Ordeals of Divine Election (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2010), pp. xiii, 65–72; Harry S. Stout, The New England Soul: Preaching and Religious Culture in Colonial New England (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1986), p. 8.

  the New Testament: 1 Peter 2:9 (“Ye are a chosen generation, . . . an holy nation, a peculiar people”).

  “did not set his love upon you, nor choose you”: Gitlin and Leibovitz, pp. 15–16.

  “Blessed art Thou”: Hayim Halevy Donin, To Pray as a Jew: A Guide to the Prayer Book and the Synagogue Service (New York: Basic Books, 1991), p. 326 (prayer for festival days); see also ibid., p. 52 (Torah blessing) (“chosen us from among the nations”), p. 325 (Sabbath blessing) (“chosen us and sanctified us above all nations”).

  “contaminated”: See Jon D. Levenson, “Chosenness and Its Enemies,” Commentary, December 2008, p. 26 (quoting José Saramago); see also Paul Berman, “Something’s Changed: Bigotry in Print. Crowds Chant Murder,” in Ron Rosenbaum, ed., Those Who Forget the Past: The Question of Anti-Semitism (New York: Random House, 2004), pp. 17–9.

  “the root of evil”: Levenson, “Chosenness and Its Enemies,” p. 26; The Associated Press and Haaretz Service, “Israel Complains About Greek Composer’s Anti-Semitic Remarks,” Haaretz, Nov. 12, 2003; Jeff Weintraub, “Theodorakis’s Jewish Problem (2004),” July 15, 2005, http://jeffweintraub.blogspot.com/2005/07/theodorakiss-jewish-problem-2004.html. Theodorakis has stated that his remarks were taken out of context (and that his later declaration, “I am an anti-Semite,” was a “slip of the tongue”). Mikis Theodorakis, Letter to the Central Board of Jewish Communities in Greece, May 16, 2011, http://www.kis.gr/en/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=421:mikis-theodorakis.

  Jewish philosophers: See, e.g., Menachem Kellner, “Chosenness, Not Chauvinism: Maimonides on the Chosen People,” in Daniel H. Frank, ed., A People Apart: Chosenness and Ritual in Jewish Philosophical Thought (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993), pp. 51–76; David Novak, The Election of Israel: The Idea of the Chosen People (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 31–108.

  Spinoza: Benedictus de Spinoza, Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, trans. Samuel Shirley (Boston: E.J. Brill, 1991) [1677], p. 100; Steven Nadler, Spinoza: A Life (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 120–32.

  Mendelssohn: See Paul Johnson, A History of the Jews (New York: Harper & Row, 1987), p. 301 (“tightrope”); Moses Mendelssohn, Jerusalem: A Treatise on Ecclesiastical Authority and Judaism, trans. M. Samuels (London: Longman, Orme, Brown, and Longmans, 1838), vol. 2, pp. 89, 102 (“Judaism boasts of no exclusive revelation of immutable truths . . . no revealed religion in the sense in which that term is usually taken. Revealed religion is one thing; revealed legislation is another”); but cf. Allan Arkush, Moses Mendelssohn and the Enlightenment (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994), pp. 218–9 (suggesting that Mendelssohn nevertheless embraced a concept of Jewish election).

  “To abandon the claim to chosenness”: Arnold M. Eisen, The Chosen People in America: A Study in Jewish Religious Ideology (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1983), pp. 3–4.

  Reconstructionist Judaism: See Avi Beker, The Chosen: The History of an Idea, and the Anatomy of an Obsession (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2008), pp. 23–4, 72–3. Reconstructionism is by far the smallest of the four major denominations of American Jews. As of 2013, only 1 percent of American Jews identified themselves as Reconstructionist; 10 percent identified themselves as Orthodox, 18 percent as Conservative, 35 percent as Reform, and 27 percent as “just Jewish.” Pew Research Center, A Portrait of Jewish Americans: Findings from a Pew Research Center Survey of U.S. Jews (Washington, DC: Pew Research Center, 2013), p. 48.

  “mission” . . . “witnesses to God’s presence”: Pittsburgh Platform, Union of American Hebrew Congregations (November 1885); “A Statement of Principles for Reform Judaism,” Central Conference of American Rabbis (Pittsburgh, May 1999), http://ccarnet.org/rabbis-speak/platforms/statement-principles-reform-judaism.

  deemphasizing if not rejecting: For a highly influential Reform rabbi’s declaration that Reform Jews “believe we have a mission to perform,” but “reject” the concept that “[Jews] are the Chosen People,” see Jacob R. Marcus, “Genesis: College Beginnings (1978),” in Gary Phillip Zola, ed., The Dynamics of American Jewish History: Jacob Rader Marcus’s Essays on American Jewry (Lebanon, NH: Brandeis University Press, 2004), p. 144. Other Reform leaders have retained the idea of chosenness. See Beker, The Chosen, p. 77.

  “There is no doubt”: Sigmund Freud, “Moses and Monotheism,” in James Strachey, ed. and trans. The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud (London: Hogarth Press, 1986), vol. 23, pp. 105–6.

  “nobler past”: Louis Dembitz Brandeis, “The Jewish Proble
m, How to Solve It” (speech delivered in June 1915), reprinted in Steve Israel and Seth Forman, eds., Great Jewish Speeches Throughout History (Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson Inc., 1994), p. 74.

  “Persecution . . . deepened the passion for righteousness”: Brandeis, “The Jewish Problem, How to Solve It,” p. 77; see also Adam Garfinkle, Jewcentricity: Why Jews Are Praised, Blamed, and Used to Explain Just About Everything (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2009), p. 58 (some Jews became “convinced of their own moral superiority to non-Jews, in rough proportion to their suffering at their hands”).

  “our role in history is actually unique”: Martin Buber, “Hebrew Humanism,” in Israel and the World: Essays in a Time of Crisis (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1997), pp. 240, 250.

  “foundational ambiguity”: Michael Chabon, “Chosen, but Not Special,” New York Times, June 6, 2010.

  “perverse sacralization”: Peter Novick, The Holocaust in American Life (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1999), p. 280.

  “two sides of the same coin”: Office of the Chief Rabbi, “Faith Lectures: Jewish Identity: The Concept of a Chosen People,” May 8, 2001, http://oldweb.chiefrabbi.org/ReadArtical.aspx?id=454.

  “extravagant” Jewish overrepresentation: Charles Murray, “Jewish Genius,” Commentary, April 2007, p. 29.

  70 percent of Israeli Jews: Nir Hasson, “Survey: Record Number of Israeli Jews Believe in God,” Haaretz, Jan. 27, 2012, http://www.haaretz.com/jewish-world/survey-record-number-of-israeli-jews-believe-in-god-1.409386; Harris Interactive, The Harris Poll No. 59, Oct. 15, 2003, p. 2, http://www.harrisinteractive.com/vault/Harris-Interactive-Poll-Research-While-Most-Americans-Believe-in-God-Only-36-pct-A-2003-10.pdf.

  locate this exceptionality: See, e.g., Raphael Patai, The Jewish Mind (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1996), pp. 8–9, 324, 339; Brandeis, “The Jewish Problem, How to Solve It,” p. 74.

  “it was up to you to invent your specialness”: S. Leyla Gürkan, The Jews as a Chosen People: Tradition and Transformation (London and New York: Routledge, 2009), p. 124 (quoting Philip Roth); Charles E. Silberman, A Certain People: American Jews and Their Lives Today (New York: Summit Books, 1985), pp. 80–1.

  “a psychology without content”: Michael P. Kramer, “The Conversion of the Jews and Other Narratives of Self-Definition: Notes Towards the Writing of Jewish American Literary History; Or, Adventures in Hebrew School,” in Emily Miller Budick, ed., Ideology and Jewish Identity in Israeli and American Literature (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2001), p. 191.

  “Israel” . . . “Zion” . . . “New Jerusalem” . . . exodus: Matthew Bowman, The Mormon People: The Making of an American Faith (New York: Random House, 2012), p. 94; Claudia L. Bushman, Contemporary Mormonism: Latter-day Saints in Modern America (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2006), pp. 15–16, 18; Terryl L. Givens, People of Paradox: A History of Mormon Culture (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. xii, xvi.

  had their Moses: Leonard J. Arrington, Brigham Young: American Moses (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1985).

  “extermination order”: Bowman, The Mormon People, p. 62.

  “a religious genius”: See, e.g., Harold Bloom, The American Religion: The Emergence of the Post-Christian Nation (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992), p. 82; Bowman, The Mormon People, p. 24.

  America’s providential place in the world: see Givens, People of Paradox, p. xvi (“Mormons have long identified their faith with America’s providential role in history”).

  Garden of Eden: On Smith’s “sacralization” of the American continent, see Bowman, The Mormon People, pp. xv–xvi, 26–7, 32–8; Bushman, Contemporary Mormonism, pp. 24–5.

  “The whole of America is Zion”: Richard Lyman Bushman, Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005), p. 519; see also pp. 94–7.

  “confident amateurism”: Bowman, The Mormon People, p. xv.

  rejected, ostracized: See Givens, People of Paradox, pp. xiii, xvi (describing Mormonism’s “history of persecution and alienation from the American mainstream”).

  crossed the country in their covered wagons: Bowman, The Mormon People, pp. 98–100; George W. Givens, The Language of the Mormon Pioneers (Springville, UT: Bonneville Books, 2003), p. 215; see also Arrington, Brigham Young, chap. 9.

  “quintessentially American religion”: Givens, People of Paradox, p. 59; see also Bowman, The Mormon People, p. xv. (“quintessential American faith”).

  only strengthened Mormons’ belief in their divine election: Jan Shipps, Mormonism: The Story of a New Religious Tradition (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1985), p. 125 (“living in the kingdom in the nineteenth century was the sign of citizenship in God’s elect nation”).

  “Great Apostasy” . . . true church: Bushman, Contemporary Mormonism, p. 3; Givens, People of Paradox, pp. xiii, xvi; Jon Krakauer, Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith (New York: Doubleday, 2003), pp. 5, 69.

  end-of-days: Bowman, The Mormon People, p. xviii (“Mormons believe that their church has been given . . . the mandate to prepare the earth for the Second Coming of Jesus Christ”). For a fascinating take on the Mormon end-of-days mentality, see Joanna Brooks, The Book of Mormon Girl: A Memoir of an American Faith (New York: Free Press, 2012), pp. 30–1, 35.

  divine communications and revelations: Bowman, The Mormon People, p. 33; Bushman, Contemporary Mormonism, pp. 3, 18; Richard Lyman Bushman, Mormonism: A Very Short Introduction (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), pp. 27–31.

  “priesthood”: See Bowman, The Mormon People, pp. 46, 140–1; Bushman, Contemporary Mormonism, p. 30 (“The priesthood is divided between the lower or Aaronic Priesthood for those twelve to eighteen and the upper or Melchizedek Priesthood for men nineteen and up”).

  “power of God”: Bowman, The Mormon People, p. 46.

  “missions”: Ibid., pp. 188–90; Bushman, Contemporary Mormonism, p. 4.

  temples: Bushman, Contemporary Mormonism, pp. 2, 75. Temples are closed not only to non-Mormons, but also to Mormons who do not live by LDS Church teachings. “To enter a temple, members must have been baptized and confirmed and must be privately interviewed in searching discussions by two levels of ecclesiastical authority every two years.” Ibid., p. 79.

  Although some Christians argue: Ibid., pp. 3, 23.

  Mormonism departs on key theological points: Bowman, The Mormon People, pp. 165–7.

  “free from the original sin that degraded mankind”: Bushman, Contemporary Mormonism, pp. x, 19, 242.

  God is a corporeal, essentially man-like person: Bowman, The Mormon People, pp. 166–7, 230; Bushman, Contemporary Mormonism, pp. 19, 23; see also Givens, People of Paradox, p. xv (“With God an exalted man” and “man a God in embryo,” Smith collapsed the conventional Christian dualism); Blake T. Ostler, “Worshipworthiness and the Mormon Concept of God,” Religious Studies 33, no. 3 (1997), pp. 315, 319–20.

  “it is no robbery to be equal to God”: Bowman, The Mormon People, p. 167.

  “godhood of their own”: Ibid., p. 230; Ostler, “Worshipworthiness and the Mormon Concept of God,” p. 320.

  families as divinely ordained units: Bowman, The Mormon People, p. 126; Bushman, Contemporary Mormonism, pp. 42–3; Givens, People of Paradox, p. 57; Richard N. Ostling and Joan K. Ostling, Mormon America: The Power and the Promise (New York: HarperOne, 2007), p. 338; Brooks, The Book of Mormon Girl, p. 136.

  early Mormon theology seems to have made the number of wives: In the 1850s, Brigham Young and the apostle Orson Pratt “declared that the procreative power that marriage legitimized persisted into the eternities, where glory was measured in the number of relations.” Bowman, The Mormon People, pp. 125–6.

  between twenty-seven and fifty-five wives: Bloom, American Religion, pp. 108.

  Smith had perhaps thirty: Bowman, The Mormon People, p. 82; see also Bloom, American Religion, p. 108.

&
nbsp; renounced polygamy: Bushman, Contemporary Mormonism, p. xi; Ostling and Ostling, Mormon America, p. xxiv; Shipps, Mormonism, p. 125.

  abstemiousness, strong families, and clean-cut children: Tim B. Heaton, Kristen L. Goodman, and Thomas B. Holman, “In Search of a Peculiar People: Are Mormon Families Really Different?,” in Marie Cornwall, Tim B. Heaton, and Lawrence A. Young, eds., Contemporary Mormonism: Social Science Perspectives (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1994), pp. 87, 113 (data confirm that “[m]ore so than the average American” “Mormonism is a family-focused religion and that its members adhere to traditional family values”); see also Bushman, Contemporary Mormonism, p. 184 (noting that in the 1960s the “shift back to some aspects of old-style Mormonism took place against the cultural change of the Civil Rights Movement, an expansion of tolerance, a general loosening of traditional morality, and substance abuse”); Ostling and Ostling, Mormon America, p. xxiv (“More than anyone on the street, [the Mormon] might seem honest, reliable, hardworking, and earnest—all the Boy Scout virtues. His children are obedient, his family close-knit”).

  “an island of morality in a sea of moral decay”: Bushman, Contemporary Mormonism, p. 35.

  I am a child of God: Children’s Songbook of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, (Salt Lake City: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 2002), pp. 2–3.

  “For nearly six thousand years”: Ezra Taft Benson, “In His Steps,” Mar. 4, 1979, www.speeches.byu.edu/?act=viewitem&id=89; Thomas S. Monson, “Dare to Stand Alone,” October 2011, http://www.lds.org/general-conference/2011/10/dare-to-stand-alone?lang=eng.

  “I don’t know about you”: Pepe Billete, “I’m Not a Latino, I’m Not a Hispanic, I’m a Cuban American!” Miami New Times, July 6, 2012, http://blogs.miaminewtimes.com/cultist/2012/07/im_not_a_latino_im_not_a_hispa.php.